In conventional cellular communication networks, a coverage area, or cell, of each base station, or wireless access node, typically covers a large geographic area serving hundreds of user equipment devices (UEs). At any given moment, tens of those UEs may be actively receiving or transmitting data. However, these conventional cellular communication networks are struggling to meet, and in some cases are unable to meet, demands placed on them by the increasing number of mobile broadband subscribers and the ever increasing demand for higher data rates. One viable solution, and possibly the only viable solution, to meet these demands is deploying more base stations.
Recently, a super dense network has been proposed as an architecture for increasing the density of base stations in a cellular communication network. As used herein, a super dense network is a wireless access node deployment wherein on average each wireless access node serves less than one active UE. Because of the low user activity per wireless access node, inter-cell interference is substantially less than that in conventional cellular communication networks and can therefore be more effectively managed. However, low user activity also implies under utilization of the wireless access nodes, which is a scenario unforeseen in the design of conventional cellular communication networks. This under utilization of the wireless access nodes results in excess power consumption by the wireless access nodes. As such, there is a need for systems and methods for energy efficient operation for wireless access nodes in a super dense network.